The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

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ensued. In the summer of 1764, new Prime Minister George Grenville warned
colonial governors that a stamp tax in the colonies was being considered. It was one
of several taxes imposed to help pay the heavy debt incurred from Seven Years War,
a large portion of which had been fought on American soil. What Parliament
passed was, “An act for granting and applying certain stamp duties, and other
duties, in the British colonies and plantations in America, towards further defraying
the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same,” and it was to take
effect November 1, 1765. The tax required legal and business documents of all
types to be printed or issued only on paper with a royal stamp, and the paper itself
had to be imported from England, substantially raising costs. Legal and business
forms were to be taxed from three pence to six pounds, paperwork for indentures
from two and a half to five percent, almanacs two pence and up, newspapers a
halfpenny to a penny per sheet, and advertisements in newspapers two shillings.
College students would have to pay two pounds to matriculate and another two
pounds to graduate while lawyers were to pay ten pounds for admission to the bar.
Even playing cards had a tax on them. Penalties for paper without the stamps were
substantial—from forty shillings to twenty pounds. Residents in England were
among the most heavily taxed in Europe and Grenville assumed that the colonists
would be willing to pay more of their share, especially as a large portion of this debt
was accrued in defending American lands. The outcry from the colonies and their
allies in England caught the ministry unprepared. 2
Although there were precedents for such a stamp tax, several differences led
to the colonists’ refusal to pay this tax. In England, a stamp tax had been in effect
since Lord Bolingbroke instituted it in 1712. That tax was one penny per sheet of
paper, plus an additional tax on advertisements. Its purpose was largely to raise
2 British Parliament, The Stamp Act (London: March 22, 1765), Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis.
Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence, 10, 14, and 68. In eighteenth century British currency, one
pound (£) equaled 20 shillings (s), which equaled 240 pence (d), or twelve pence to the shilling
from Jeremy Black, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1987), introduction.